During the Vietnam War, my Dad was stationed in Thailand as a French translator. He gave me this old mug he took from the enlisted men’s club in Bangkok. I know the writing is impossible to read on that photo, so here you go: Klub Kee Maow.

On my way to the grocery store, I stopped and took some photos. First up is the bridge connecting Warren Road to Merryman’s Mill. From Warren, once you’ve crossed the bridge, there’s a small parking area on the right hand side. All the years I’ve lived around here I’ve never actually stopped there, but today I did because I figured, “What the hell?” There’s a path so you can get down the hill a bit, and it is beautiful – neverminding the trash bags, beer bottles, and other crap that ignorant people have litered about.

I cross that bridge usually twice a day, and I’ve never quite seen it that majestic. I guess there’s some truth to the adage, “stop and smell the roses”, or in this case, “stop and look under the bridge.” Aaahh! Troll! Troll!

If you’re wondering, the water body below is part of the Loch Raven Reservoir, although I’m not sure if this is actually considered part of the Reservoir proper or a tributary … what do I know?

My car, parked on Merryman’s Mill Road.

This next photo is of the Paper Mill bridge(s) just north of the Warren/Merryman’s Mill bridge.

The white bridge on the right was the original – about three or four years ago the new bridge was built, and Paper Mill Road redirected slightly so that traffic could get to it. I’m kind of surprised they’ve just left the original bridge in place, especially since the new one’s paint job gives it the impression its rusted out. Whatever.

This is the Sparks Road bridge, waaaay up off York Road. I’m sure the water it crosses connects to the Loch Raven, but I’m too lazy to look at a map. I meant to take a photo of the remains of the original Sparks Elementary School, but I didn’t, so … next time!

I hit my first deer on a warm January night several years ago. It was about 11pm and I was driving towards York Road on Paper Mill, right before it becomes Ashland. There’s a church on the right hand side of the road, which dips down and around it. Well, coming around it, BAM!, I smacked into a deer.

I can remember the moment of impact perfectly.

There was a truck behind me, and three cars about twenty meters down the road coming in my direction. The deer jumped into the road and looked towards me with its big brown eyes and time seemed to just slow down as I remember thinking “There is a deer in the path of my vehicle this isn’t good” and I remember my left foot slamming into the clutch pedal as my right foot slammed onto the brake and then there was this jarring shake and the Jeep was shunted towards oncoming traffic but I was able to yank the wheel back and avoid hitting a car because wouldn’t that just be a great way to end the fucking night … and then time decided to speed back up again.

I pulled into that big parking lot – you know the one – and examined my Jeep with the help of my maglite. I was expecting a cracked bumper, certainly some blood – but there was none of that. The deer was over in the bushes struggling to limp away, I think it’d broken its legs in the impact.

The guy behind me stopped too, asked if I was alright, then said he’d wait with me until the police showed up. I told him that wasn’t neccessary, but he did anyway. I called Baltimore County PD, the officer showed up, asked if there was any damage to either of our vehicles, we both said no, then he told us we could go. “What about the deer?” I asked.

“I’ve got a call into animal control,” he told me. “If they can’t get here” — and with this, I remember his hand patting the SigSauer on his belt — “I’ll put it to rest.”

I hit another deer on Jerome Jay Drive,and then another heading the opposite way on Paper Mill Road, right after Old York. The cop who showed up asked me, “Do you want the deer?” Yeah, like I’m going to throw a deer corpse into my Jeep. I also almost hit a horse, and I don’t think many people can claim that.

Luckily, while these accidents were bad for the health of the deer I was without mercy mowing down, I have never had a run in with one as bad as this.

Troy</u – Long, but entertaining. Good gory battles, but as with all epics, no real time for character development — eh, like I said, gory battles, who needs anything else? I really don’t like this “let’s be truthful” aspect in films – when I watched “King Arthur”, I wanted to see him rip Excalibur from the stone, and here I wanted to see the Greek Gods! Decent film, hate Achilles, and fuck Orlando Bloom — all those lives for his selfish love? What a twat.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy was the best movie I have ever seen. Oh, wait, no it isn’t. Actually, the movie sucked. There were some cool and unexpected cameos, but go save yourself the frustration of forcing yourself to laugh and rent Dodgeball.

Employee of the Month - I don’t really know what to say about this movie, except that if I did a star rating, it would be like negative ten kabillion stars. It’s like they wrote a story about a guy (Matt Dillon) who has the perfect life, then everything goes in the toilet and he then goes into work with a handgun stuffed in his pants. And then they realized, “Oh, we have only thirty minutes worth of material here!” And so they decided to write some pointless and overly long scenes featuring Stephen Zahn that offer nothing to the story, or the enjoyment of such. And then they were like, “We need an ending!” so they came up with this nonsense about Matt confronting his boss all “I’m going to go postal!”-like, and then walking out into a bank robbery. But no, that wasn’t good enough, they tried to do the whole Usual Suspects/Wild Things plot twist at the end, except it made no sense because there were no clues leading up to it and half of the things that happened to the characters they would’ve had to take into account came out of the f’ing blue! Horrible crappy movie. Really, if you’re going to write a watered down Jack Black scene for Stephen Zahn, just realize right now that Zahn SUCKS ASS and you should just shell out the fucking money for Black. Hey, he did a cameo in Anchorman, how hard can it be to fucking get him, jackasses!

UPDATE:

Thanks to that fucking long nap today (and yes, I do tend to swear this much in real life, put the soap away) I had enough steam to get through Collateral. It was certainly entertaining, but it was also very formulaic – innocent dude gets twisted up in evil dude’s plot, learns lessons of life, “puts right what once went wrong.” I threw that in because Bruce McGill is in it. There’s nothing in this film you probably haven’t already seen, except for Tom Cruise playing a loser hitman. Personally, I’d rather watch Grosse Pointe Blank again.